Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Exile

A bunch of diverse teenagers from a bunch of different schools are headed out on a school-funded excursion to a village in Malaysia for four months. For school reasons. I think they explained it at the beginning of the movie but I missed it. And it turned out not to matter anyway because when they transfer from an airliner to a little seaplane, the little seaplane crashes and strands them on a deserted island. Their teacher, who was the only adult chaperone (not counting the asshole drug smuggling pilot, who I'll get to), insists on leaving with the pilot to get help, thus stranding all the teenagers.
Hilarity ensues.
Well, sort of. Not really.
There were some funny moments, most of which were provided by a comic relief character named Derf, played by Christian Jacobs (so we all already know 1) why I was watching this movie at all and 2) who my favorite character was). But the funniest moment was provided by a different character, who promptly and abruptly died offscreen less than a minute later, putting a damper on my moment of joyous laughter. Thanks a lot, movie.
A lot of the movie focuses on how different characters get along (or don't get along, as they case may be) and how they build a society on the island. There were a few plot points I felt were sort of abandoned or not really looked into (I thought the kid who talked to monkeys was cool but they didn't do much with that). And Derf faded into the background as soon as the movie decided to be pretty much completely serious. So there's that.
And then ... Okay, this is getting spoilery from here on in so if you have any interest in seeing Exile, maybe stop reading now. Okay, so it turns out the pilot crashed when he went back to get help. The teacher died and the pilot stranded himself on the same island as the kids. The kids find him and offer to let him come live with them, where he proceeds to be the world's worst houseguest: bossing them around, stealing their stuff, making sexual advances toward underage girls, peeing too close to the only water source, that sort of thing.
Now I'm going to be extra special spoilery and give away the end of the movie so stop reading if you care about that: Asshole Pilot kidnaps one of the girls and everyone goes all battle mode to get her back. Which they do. And Monkey Kid clocks Asshole Pilot in the head with a rock, which knocks him out. Then they end by saying "We've been on the island about a month and we're doing pretty well for ourselves and it's funny that the first thing we built is a jail."
What?! No! Kill that asshole. He's going to break out and commit all the rape. I'm pretty sure he already did rape that girl he kidnapped. One guy even brought up murder in one of the "what sort of laws are we making?" scenes and so I thought that was going to be a pretty important plot point. But nobody murdered anybody. Yet another thread the movie picked up and then dropped without studying it. Annoying.
But I did really like the fact that the movie just ended without any real closure. They may not ever get rescued but they have society now.
(If I were feeling a little more awake and clever, I'd draw a comparison between the fact that this movie has Christian Jacobs stranded on an island and how now he's a superhero from a little island called Aquabania but you can go ahead and make up your own silly fan theories 'cause I just don't feel like it right now.)

End of line.
-Sally

No comments: